


Humanity Is a Work-In-Progress

by Emeritusnail



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, M/M, Other, Platonic Relationships, Slow Burn, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 22:53:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10523598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeritusnail/pseuds/Emeritusnail
Summary: The Sole Survivor discovers something life-shattering about himself, and must figure out how to pick up the pieces.





	

“Well ain't that a kick in the head?”

 

The scarred man ignored the detective, grinding his teeth in quiet fear and fury. Axel didn’t have it in him to get on Nick about privacy - not that he had closed the door when he had decided to run a shower. He hadn’t cared. After all,  in a living horror of radiation, mutants, and dust, where more people strove to kill each other than get along, what could matter at this point, if a robot saw his goddamn ass?

 

No. He didn’t care, about a lot of things. He cared about what happened to his son, and then there was this.

 

When had been the last time he had bathed, that this was the first time he had noticed them? These  steel circles embedded into his skin? Axel couldn’t remember - surely, he wasn’t so clueless! How was he discovering them just now, after a year?

 

The man squinted out of the corner of his eye behind him, his back facing a fractured mirror hanging on the wall. One arm was contorted over his shoulder, stretching as far as he could make it go.The rusted frame was too small for anything other than shaving. It was after seeing a glimpse of chrome when he had taken off his clothes, he had turned - 

 

Twisting, fumbling, trying to disobey the strain and the headache burning up his neck from this position-

 

God almighty. Touching one of the - what were they, ports?- felt wrong. His fingertip slipped over the steel, send a chilling shockwave throughout his body. He persisted. Surely it wasn’t that deep? He strained to probe deeper.

 

The next thing he knew, Axel was laying on the floor propped up in the detective’s arms. He couldn’t make out what the synth was saying and didn’t care. Calmly, his mind processed-struggled, and then accepted- he couldn’t breathe. Needed to breathe, yes, and he wheezed and gasped; but the threat escaped him. He could have been underwater for all it mattered. The tangible world was nowhere nearby.

 

They could have lain like that for a while. Axel couldn’t be sure when his lungs started working again, and all he was left to do was to stare up into that mannequin face of Nick’s. 

 

The synth stared back, but it was more than that. He was observing him. Axel could practically hear gears turning.  Axel blinked.

 

“So.”

 

“So,” Nick echoed, looking off then, speaking softly. “What, are you feeling alright? Don’t know what you did, but if you want to have my guess…” He trailed off and let the question hang.

 

Axel rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”

 

“You say that about everything,” Nick said. “It does matter. Everything matters. I told you my story, right? About how hard it was to find a home in the Commonwealth, how eventually people accepted me for who I was, or rather - what I could do?”

 

Axe remained silent, lip drawing to the side, not sure where this was going, despite all the cliches and noir that generally made Nick predictable. He looked around at the small bathroom, at the glimpses of grey sky he could see around the chipped tile. How the light above swayed naked under its little metal hat, the wiring like so many tangled vines that had penetrated so much wreckage in the absence of humanity.

 

“I left out some things,” Nick continued. “Like the despair I felt for being alone. Not that I really had time to dwell on it, while living in the ruins. But sometimes, in my little corner of Diamond City, it’d get to me. How different I was, and how it created a void between me and someone just across the street. The mind can only address what it can comprehend. To some people, speaking makes me even more of a riddle, a figment of the deeper shadow that hangs over all of us. And in return, I block them out. Can’t dwell on it.”

 

“I’ve been watching you since we first met up. You were a soldier, which has done a lot of good for your survival. But there’s something more to it, the way youre so cool-headed and calm. Except for your son, you don’t care, do you?”

 

“I care,” Axel answered quietly.

 

“When I get shot, you don’t do anything,” Nick said.

 

“Only because you know how to handle yourself.”

 

He watched Nick shake his head, his fedora casting dark shadows over his profile. “Axel, if it came down to me and your kid, you’d go through me in a heartbeat. If I hadn’t seen you cry when we found that skeleton-”

 

“I’m not heartless, Nick.”

 

“I’m not saying that.” The synth sighed, and rubbed his face. “Look, this is a touchy topic. What I AM trying to get at, is you need to take a step back. Let everything sink in. Process this world you live in, because running around, shooting up baddies isn’t going to make you stop feeling what you’re feeling. Or, start feeling. I’ve told you before - you need a home.  I also wonder about that vault you told me about. Was it only cryogenics they had going on?”

 

Axel’s shoulders tensed. “What...Exactly, are you thinking?” 

 

“Well those are definitely cybernetics you got there.”

 

Silence bridged between them, punctuated by a deep sigh on Axel’s behalf. The sound of it was slow and hissing, pained. He was still naked, right? He needed to go get dressed. Nick didn’t react when he moved, didn’t try to stop him from leaving the bathroom of his rebuilt pre-war home, and vanish into the bedroom. 

 

The walls were thin enough that he could still hear the hammers and voices of Sanctuary Hills outside. The darkness gave him peace of mind, knowing without the light on, no one would come knocking for help. He stared, squinting into the drawer of his bureau, at the folded, grimy garments he’d salvaged. Some part of him knew he was tired of fighting, and didn’t know what to make of it. He took a flannel shirt into his hand. Simple cloth - he wouldn’t be strapping metal plates on over this. It wouldn’t witness the bloodlust. These were normal clothes, for normal people.

 

He shouldn’t have been the Sole Survivor. The things that had happened, shouldn’t have happened. But now, to find out there were reasons? Plans, even?

 

The fabric fell away from his grasp. Axel crept over to the space beneath his boarded up window, beside his bed, and sat down.

 

Christ. He had been a soldier. He had fought for his country. Even now, he could recount the speech he had been supposed to give.

 

The man inhaled slowly, tasting the dust of over two-hundred years’ worth of absence. Cogsworth had done a good job in cleaning - but no, this wasn’t dirt. Nothing was soiled, ruined. Nick was right - there was a void. It yawned before him, translucent yet darker than anything he had borne witness to. It engulfed the bed, the shadows beneath it. It stretched into the closet, and over to the door. Everything it touched became insignificant. The reality of yearning turned itself inside out. The distance was too far, too high to make the climb. And far, far away, in another world, on the other side of the room, he knew that time still moved. 

 

Axel felt empty, intangible.

 

The life he had before and the life he had now did not intersect. He didn’t dream at night, if he slept at all. What did it mean when a man could go for days without taking a rest? Shouldn’t that have been a sign that something wasn’t right?

 

When he fought, he aimed to kill. Bullets, lasers, teeth, claws - none of it mattered. He’d aim, he’d shoot. Sometimes he’d charge right in, bullets glancing off his armor, teeth digging in. The pain had never bothered him. He’d...Groan, he’d supposed, and sometimes cry out if it startled him - but it’d never….Affected him. Not like it did other people. The ones he'd killed.

 

Axel took his time, thinking about that. 

 

Hell, sometimes it even made him excited. He was always more than happy to tear into someone, knowing how it’d end when it did. The pain made it a challenge, something to find a way around. There were other things he left numbly on the tip of his tongue. He didn’t want to think - and that was the thing about Nick Valentine, he made everyone think. 

 

Now, Axel had a knock forming in between his brows, aching from the exertion. All he knew, was he wasn’t a happy man.

 

If he was a man at all, by this point.

 

Eventually, Axel heard a knock at the door. Instead of answering, he got up and got dressed like he’d originally planned to do. Every motion felt slow and aching, his hands numb and finding difficulty holding anything. He decided on a long-sleeved button-shirt and slacks. It took a while, but it finally made him stop thinking whatever had been going through his mind before. 

 

“Hey, are you holding up in there?”

 

Axel had figured it was Nick. Now he’d have to explain himself and face those deathless, neon-yellow eyes. Dogged old man. There were definitely reasons he was good at what he did, and why he was hired. The man braced himself, inhaling slowly before opening the door. His expression was a practiced, flat look.

 

“Yes?”

 

Nick actually seemed a little...Abashed? Axel could hear his eyes screw themselves into focus as he looked at the wall, before shifting back. “I’m sorry if anything I said was...Offensive,” The detective told him. “I know we’re professionals. Getting buddy-buddy wasn’t in the script. I just didn’t want you losing your head.”

 

Brassy, professional, tactful. Good old Nick.

 

Axel nodded. “I appreciate that.”

 

“Given your little surprise,” Nick continued, tipping his hat. “ I’m going to head up to the old vault and take a look around. Give you some space. If I find anything, I’ll let you know. Don’t leave Sanctuary Hills without telling anyone, got it?”

 

The man barely refrained from rolling his eyes. Instead, he squared his shoulders, hand sliding casually into his pocket. With the shift in stance, he nodded, careful to keep his expression neutral. Not that he felt anything in particular, except a little worry. “I won’t. I’ll find something to do.”

 

“All right then. Be seeing you.” And then he really was alone, Nick walking through his hall, and turning out the door. 

 

Outside there came the sound of rolling thunder, and he tasted something sour in his mouth. Radiation. It leaked through the air, stained the walls - and yet didn’t seem to linger to where he noticed it. Quietly, Axel closed the door, laid on his bare mattress, and imagined the poison seeping into his skin. He imagined disintegrating. Or the roof collapsing.

  
It was a shame he felt perfectly healthy. The Sole Survivor blinked helplessly at the dark ceiling of his room.

**Author's Note:**

> Really just doing this for fun. Romance will happen in of itself, and not necessarily with Nick. We'll have to see how this goes.


End file.
